Favorites Hurt

I believe that in every family there is always a favorite, and when you aren’t that favorite it hurts so much. I am an only child so I therefore have to be the favorite in my main family, but I am talking more about your whole family, like your aunts and uncles and grandmas and grandpas. They will always have a favorite child or a favorite grandchild.

When you aren’t the favorite it sucks, a lot, to watch your family be so happy, whether you are there or not. In my family favoritism is bad. I am not the favorite grandchild by all means even though I’ve tried. I am basically an outcast on both my mom’s and dad’s side of the family.

I love to see my grandparents being happy but I hate seeing them be happy when doing fun stuff with my cousins and I never get to be included. I never even get to be acknowledged when it comes to having “family-fun.” It isn’t jealousy at all, it is anger mostly, and the feeling of being left out.

I used to think it was only my family that was like this, but after talking to friends and looking closer at other families I realized that most of them are just as bad if not worse than mine.

Another thing that I have noticed with favorites is that the parent or grandparent that has a favorite wants almost nothing to do with the rest of their family. I haven’t talked to or even seen one of my grandmas in almost two years now. I think it is pretty pathetic how people can almost completely abandon their own flesh and blood. It’s just sad.

I have to say that I have witnessed a few good things come out with having favorites in a family, and that is you can come out as a better person. I like to think sometimes that I have. One of my family members, which is a favorite, relies on her mother for everything: money, gas, food, a babysitter, almost anything you can think of, because her parents were always there for her when she was younger and now that she is an adult she doesn’t know how to do almost anything without her mother’s help. I have learned that when you are not a favorite you learn to do things more on your own and be less dependant on others. I don’t know if this is a good or a bad thing, but I like to think of it as being a good lesson learned. My main family is very independent. I have realized that a lot of my friend’s families are that way, too.

I still think that favoritism is totally wrong and isn‘t fair at all, but it is an obstacle in life that almost every family has to overcome sooner or later.

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Growing up in the former Yugoslavia, lawyer Djenita Pasic enjoyed the peace of her religiously diverse country. But after the fall of communism and the outbreak of the Bosnian War, Pasic was forced to reevaluate her ideas about religion and tolerance. Click here to read her essay.